A Week, Briefly (Feb 21, 2022)

 Puzzles are the current kid craze.  Little Princess started it, and the younger kids have eagerly searched the game closet for interesting puzzles.  (Even though we clean that closet out at least once every year, somehow half of the puzzles have missing pieces every time!)

 

She was doing one 100 piece puzzle over and over and over again.  When I went shopping I picked up a $5 puzzle that was new to her and a bit more of a challenge.

 The weather has continued to swing precariously between single digits with storms and 60s with sun.  One day we can take the babies out to play half of the day, and the next we have to keep them indoors because the wind chill makes it dangerous.  On cold days, they stand at the windows pointing to the deck pleading, "Ou'si'e?  Ou'si'e?"  We do our best to distract them with dancing and playdough and stories.

It looks like another cold is going through the ranks.  A couple of the babies went home sick on Friday, and today Little Princess is in bed with a sore throat and achy body.

While we won't actually finish our planned Early American History for the elementary crew until the end of the coming week, I took a picture of the books we read this year.

I just realized as I studied this picture that I forgot to include Viking Tales in the picture.  That was the book we started with!

 

It was an interesting year with lots of good read alouds.  We have 5 chapters of A Child's First Book of American History to read, and then we're done until we start the second half of our study next fall. 

 We finished Cat of Bubastes and started Bulfinch's Greek and Roman Mythology.  We won't read the whole book because it covers cultures that aren't part of our course of study right now, but we'll read a good 200 pages of the text before moving on to some of Rosemary Sutcliff's historical fiction set in Greece.

It's so funny how attached we get to books--especially books that are hard at first, but we love by the end.  Baymax said, "This new book is boring.  I miss the Cat of Bubastes, don't you?"  He said the same thing about the transition between The Golden Goblet and Cat of Bubastes.  But I don't think this one will win them over the way the others have, because it's a collection of stories instead of a single narrative with characters that invite us to invest in them.

 

One night when the older kids were gone, I pulled Just So Stories off the shelf and read about Rhinoceros, Camel, Whale, and a few others.  There was a line in Cheetah's story that hit Mister Man just the right way, and he laughed for several minutes--real, gut-busting, rolling laughter.  It was funny to the rest of us, but Mister Man's reaction was priceless!

We've been using our personal dry erase boards a lot lately!

Beowulf filled the whole board with handwriting guidelines before he was ready to do some spelling dictation.  He's liking The Good and the Beautiful Grade 2 language arts, though the lessons are too long for him!  I thought he'd be able to speed through them easily, but they draw on his concentration far too deeply, and we have to do half a lesson a day.

Sugar Bear has always believed that my lap belongs to her and to her alone, and she sits on my lap for well over half of the hours I spend working on homeschool with kids.  However, she's getting wigglier and more independent while simultaneously wanting me to be in her sight at all times.  The dry-erase boards are helping us find a balance.

Baymax also wants to be near me almost all of the time.  One day, when I couldn't stand to have him climb on my back while I was trying to teach a math lesson to Beowulf, I handed him a board.  He proceeded to draw the battle after which Francis Scott Key wrote The Star-Spangled Banner.  He remembered to draw the American ship and British ship tied together after I took this picture.

 

Ladybug had a really good week of helping care for babies, and when I realized how much she was doing, I paid her for her work.  Interestingly, the reward backfired, and she was far less involved this week, even with a clear promise to continue paying her for her help.  However, what care she did offer was completed competently.

Little Stretch loves mealtimes, and he loves Ladybug!

I love watching Nature Angel paint, and look at all of her color samples!

She and I had a transcript conversation one early morning this week.  I wanted to reassure her that she's doing more than she thinks she is and tell her she is not failing her freshman year of high school.  Together we counted enough hours for 5.5 credits right at this moment.  As she continues to complete her coursework, that number will rise higher.  I was happy to see her smile relax and some of the tension drain out of her shoulders.  

 We also discussed very tentative college plans and career goals, and I reminded her that her non-traditional life will create a non-traditional high school transcript which will not hurt her one bit as she pursues her artistic dreams.

Beowulf completed 208 of 212 pages in this book.  I've moved him to The Good and the Beautiful Math 3, and he really likes it.  I thought he could start level 4, but he barely qualified for level 3 in the placement tests, so . . . that is what we're doing now.  He catches on quickly to math concepts, so I was very surprised to find this review necessary.

I ordered an extra level 3 book for Ladybug, and she and Beowulf are able to share the activity box.  She's really happy with it.  I knew full well that she'd need the review.

 

Brother's math book is not working at all for him, so I'm going to have him take the math placement test for The Good and the Beautiful on Monday.  I'd move him back to Rod and Staff, but it's part of his therapy to expose him to different curricula, so that he can develop the ability to accept different ways of doing the same thing.

We had an interview with a new daycare family.  The little boy is 20 months old, and he will be joined by a new sibling in mid-summer.  We were hesitant to add more little people to our schedule, but the parents seemed to hopeful and so in need that we opened our hearts yet again.  He's darling!  He'll join our crew on March 7.

The forecast ahead calls for temperatures in the 60s and 70s every day.  The snow is melted, the ground is drying, and the sunshine and breezes will lure us out-of-doors!